


Nor Shall My Sword Sleep in My Hand

by lilacsigil



Category: V for Vendetta (Comic)
Genre: Gen, Police
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch is finally free, but even walking the deserted motorway, he is not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nor Shall My Sword Sleep in My Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



Finch walked on, the roads empty. The cars were all turned onto their roofs in the side streets, looters and rioters tearing into the people trying to escape with their wealth and status intact. The cars were slow and vulnerable in the crooked London streets and Finch, despite his badge and his gun, had not stopped at a single incident, despite the screams and the flames.

"I don't know where they thought they were going," Cynthia muttered, falling into step beside her husband. She was knitting as they walked, though Finch couldn't see the end of the thread, and the scarf changed colour from green to yellow to red to black without pause. Maybe the thread was in her pocket, or rolling along behind them, bouncing on the empty motorway. "West, North, anywhere's more dangerous to people like that than London is. Have they already forgotten the riots after the war?"

Finch went to put his hand on her elbow, to guide her forward without interrupting the clackity clack of the knitting needles, but she was further away from him than he had thought, and, when he reached out, further again. He shoved his hand back in his coat pocket. "If I could make myself forget and serve, it can't be hard for them to forget and rule."

Cynthia laughed, and Finch had to stop walking for a moment, shocked by the clear, open and merry sound that he hadn't heard - not just from Cynthia, but from anyone - in years. "Come on, you silly old man," she called back over her shoulder, and he scurried to catch up. "You didn't forget a thing, Eric, you just couldn't understand that the rules had betrayed you. I'm glad you understand now." The moment he caught up to her, she stopped, stepping in front of him, and draped the colourful scarf she had made around his neck, tucking the warm wool into his collar and kissing him on the cheek as if she was seeing him off to a day at work. "Wear this. You must take care of yourself, dear heart."

When the rain started, Finch tugged his scarf closer and sheltered under a pedestrian overpass, though the wind still chilled him to the bone. He knew what Cynthia meant, though, Cynthia who was ten years gone but still loved him. His freedom had come at a price, and that price was the collapse of every support that had held him up, had held him in place. Most of them were lies, of course, lies he had accepted or actively created, but they were familiar, comfortable lies that his visit to Larkhill had violently destroyed. It would be so easy to follow his wife and son into the dark, but Cynthia had loved him, flawed as he was, and if she didn't want his light extinguished just yet, he would honour her memory with his survival. Finch laughed loudly, dislodging one end of the scarf: was it just his own wretched survival instinct, fighting him with images of his wife? His mind could knit her memory into a Rasta scarf he'd found somewhere - however unlikely it was that one had survived all this time - telling him that his wife had given it to him. The drugs he had taken weren't still in his system, were they? His attempt to think like the terrorist codenamed V had succeeded beyond all possible doubt.

 

"I'm not sorry I killed you," he said to the dark figure in the tall hat, standing in just the right place to give Finch a little shelter from the wind. The man shrugged, his heavy cloak shuddering with the movement, exposing the faint gleam of the daggers at his belt.

"There's no need to stick me with another of those, either," Finch got to his feet, determined to look the man in the face, unlike their last encounter where he had grubbed about on the dirty tiles of the Underground as V stood over him, unflinching even as he was mortally wounded. "I know what you wanted me to do. And I've heard your voice on the radio and on the television, blaring out of houses, since you died, your voice and not your voice. Without death, you couldn't have immortality. So what do you want from me now? I've already been your executioner."

V bowed, moving forward so that the wind caught the edges of his cloak and fluttered them towards Finch like great wings, but made no move towards his weapons.

"I'm not afraid anymore, V. I know I'm no part of your vendetta." Finch smiled, suddenly. "I never was afraid of you. Just afraid for myself, for all my precious walls."

V held out one gloved hand, palm upwards, his ridiculous smiling mask implacably merry.

Finch opened his mouth to tell V that he had nothing for him, then he realised what the man wanted, and dug about in his coat pocket for his official badge.

"Here." He placed it firmly on the waiting hand. The fingers folded around it and the badge was gone. "You're the one with the power, not me. You want to change people's minds, but I have no authority. I have no kingdom."

V bowed again, and this time Finch saw no mockery, only a gold badge falling to the ground and bouncing just once, off the road and into the gutter. Both man and badge were gone, and the November wind was icy again, even as the rain stopped. Finch stood up straight and, feeling like he was the only person left in the wide grey world, proceeded down the motorway, his step light and his soul lonely.

 

The sun rose, a dim primrose circle in the sky, and Finch was startled to realise that he'd walked all night beneath the hostile glow of the light towers along the concrete of the central reservation. The lights blinked out, one by one, in a long automated sweep away from him; their false daylight replaced by a dawn more genuine, but far less bright. Finch's stomach rumbled, a surprising noise that seemed to pull him back into his body, as if he been floating above it previously. His shoulder hurt where he had been stabbed, his feet ached with the long walk, his mouth was dry, his bladder was full, and the faint nausea of the craving for his pipe was beginning to wash through his system. He dug in his coat pocket and found the pipe, though he had no tobacco, stuck the end of it firmly between his teeth and walked on. Each bodily sensation lurched through him as if he was on a funfair carousel, seeing brief, intense flashes of the world as it swung him around and around. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, really - in fact, it was a little exciting to feel so intensely what he had ignored and drunk into nothingness for such a long time, a child testing his physical limits.

His pocket crinkled, but it wasn't food, only the empty wrapper of the white chocolate bar that he had eaten after his shoulder had been bandaged. A wash of saliva filled his mouth, and with it came the taste of real chocolate, dark and rich, though of course there had been none made since the war started and Africa was bombed. He'd heard the Leader talking about experiments in growing cocoa, the old familiar taste an easy way to placate the people, but nothing had come of it, and the remaining chocolate was kept for the powerful and connected.

"I gave you a chocolate, once," Delia reminded him, her voice slow and sleepy. Finch looked over at her, but she didn't have any now, much to his disappointment. "You're hungry. You should pay attention to that."

Finch sighed, but he obediently began to walk towards the exit slip of the motorway, a road still lit by one orange-tinted light. He shoved his pipe back into his pocket. "I saw your diary, Delia, from Larkhill."

She held out her white-gloved hands. "Not a spot of blood on me." Her lab coat and gloves looked odd over her thin white pyjamas, but she was right - she was entirely clean.

"But I read what you wrote -you had a heart, you felt terrible about what you'd done."

"Felt! Felt! Felt!" Delia shrieked, and threw something against the rail of the exit road. The red mass hit heavily and slid to the ground, bleeding, but her hands were still white and clean. "I felt good! I felt bad! It felt like a dream! You feel free! I welcomed death so I would feel no more pain. It all means nothing."

Finch peered at the red, bloody thing Delia had thrown, but could make no sense of its shape. "You can't tell me it's wrong to regret and grieve. If I'd done that, maybe I would have been free a long time ago."

She ran her gloved hands over his back, and they made an odd, dry noise like parchment. "If I regretted and grieved and yet did nothing, how am I different from the evil men? That's all they need, for us to do nothing. And you're walking away."

Finch could hear shouting, not too far away. "I'm not walking away, Delia. I'm walking backwards."

She giggled, a weirdly childish noise for such a serious woman. "Rewinding your complicity? Erasing your obedience? Oh no, those are part of you now. Those are your bones. Fiddle diddle the flesh all you like, punish yourself raw, but the bones never change." Finch turned, angry, and caught her hands, the latex creaking under his grip. Her expression of mild interest didn't change. "There is no backwards."

 

And Finch was holding nothing, the taste of chocolate gone from his mouth, Delia's cold hands gone from his grip. The meaty lump she had thrown was gone, too, but it hadn't just vanished: it had moved, somehow, leaving a bloody trail bright against the dull grey road. It had slid under the safety rail and down the bare embankment, bleeding all the way. Finch glanced down at the exit road then back at the embankment, which was steep and looked slippery after last night's rain. If Delia was right, that he couldn't shed his sins, why should he bother to try the harder route? His fingers strayed to the black fringe of his bright scarf and he shook his head. He'd lived in despair for a long time - it shouldn't take him so long to recognise it in another, especially a woman with whom he had clung together at night, holding her tightly beneath scratchy blankets, watching the ceiling as if it were about to lower and crush them.

He had already given up on everything, years ago, and so had Delia. Here he was, though, walking on his tired feet, craving chocolate and a smoke, needing to take a piss. He unzipped his fly and took care of one of his needs against the safety rail, then looked about hopefully as if one of his other desires was about to materialise. He couldn't quite manage to laugh at himself for doing so - any hope at all seemed like a ridiculous idea, but he wasn't dead. Since Cynthia's gift, he'd dismissed the vaguest thoughts of that dark flipside of his freedom to live, and that in itself kept him moving onwards, though he was devoid of destination and intent. It seemed best to follow the trail that had been left for him, and the idea that it was only in his mind had become simply irrelevant to Finch. The urge to separate reality from fiction that had dogged him his entire life no longer seemed important ,when truth had turned out to be quite different from either.

Finch walked on a few steps from where he had pissed, and looked down at the trail of blood left by the shapeless lump of flesh. He climbed over the railing and galloped down the embankment with more agility than he expected, following the slick smears of blood downwards, then along a concrete valley full of puddles and clumps of rotting leaves. It was hard to see the bloody speckles on the brown leaves, but every time he thought the trail had ended he caught a glimpse of bright scarlet up ahead. He seemed to be getting closer to the shouting that he'd briefly heard from the motorway, but the shifting wind made it hard to pinpoint their direction. The cracked concrete culvert grew narrower, and the bloody trail brighter, until it led Finch up a short, steep hill. He put his head down and stamped briskly up the incline, having to use his hands as well to manage the final section. One foot slipped a little on the damp concrete, and he stretched a hand to steady himself, only to grab the leather-clad foot of the figure standing at the top of the incline.

V reached down to grab Finch's wrist and helped him up the last few yards to the top of the hill, where the meaty lump that Delia had thrown was resting between V's feet, heaving slightly as if it, too, was gasping for air. V let go of Finch's arm and bent down to scoop up the mass in both hands. It sat there heavily, still quivering slightly, though it was no longer bleeding, and V swept it under his heavy cloak, shoving it right into his own open ribcage, the ends of the bones gleaming like wet petals.

"And could it think, the heart would stop beating." V's cloak fell back across his chest, concealing the bloody mess of his chest. "But you, my brave assassin, bring it back." V's voice was different, though still hollow and distorted by the mask: he sounded lighter and younger than the man on the early television broadcasts, the man Finch had shot. It was strange to see him here, pale daylight creeping around his silhouette, instead of in the dark, lit by explosions or studio lights. His cloak hung so flatly from his shoulders that he looked two-dimensional, not a figure of terror but a paper cut-out standing in the wet green grass at the top of the hill.

"I've nothing more to give you," Finch said, holding his empty hands wide. V mimicked his gesture, his gloved hands small, and, with a flicker of his grey coat, he was suddenly replicated, a new V standing either side of the first, their hands touching like a row of paper dolls. Finch blinked in surprise and they multiplied again, adding one more V at each end of the row, for a total of five, all swaying slightly as if a stiff breeze would knock them down.

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," the one on the left whispered, and the next continued.

"The best lack all conviction, Mister Plod."

The middle V was silent, but the fourth spoke, in that youthful voice, neither male nor female. "You think, but your heart begins to beat."

"I loosed mere anarchy upon the world." As the fifth V spoke, they folded back together again, an accordion of dark cloaks and tall hats on smiling masks, until there was only one, then he was fading, too, his last words as pale as the dawn light.

"...shall not cease from mental fight."

 

Finch scrubbed at his eyes with his fists, but all the V paper dolls were gone, along with their white-faced smirks and hidden wounds, leaving just bloody drops on the grass, bright as poppies on a battlefield. Taking two more stumbling strides, Finch reached the top of the hill, stepping into the dotted ring of blood, and finally saw the source of the shouting.

A pack of a dozen young man were clustered around a small garden shed, beating on the wooden slats with crowbars and beer bottles, shouting and screaming with excitement and rage. Behind them, a small house smouldered, its smashed windows and half-burnt walls testimony to an orgy of destruction. Looking further, from his lofty vantage point, Finch could see where the men had been before arriving here - houses were on fire, a car on its roof in the street, the meagre canned goods of a corner shop had been hurled everywhere, smashing windows. A small dog and a middle-aged woman in an apron lay dead on the road together, the blood from her head seeping into the dog's curly white fur.

The chaos of the banging and shouting was starting to coalesce into a ragged chant and a comprehensive assault on the door. "Come out, scrag! Come out, scrag!"

Finch looked down with a peculiar quiet in his heart, as if what he saw was a continent away, a vast distance separating their worlds, marked only by a row of vanishing street lights. V was right: it was mere anarchy that had been unleashed, and Finch was protected, had always been protected, by the bars of his cage. He could see the bars heavy before him: all that he had done for the Leader, his age and authority, his colour and his sex, his obedience and surrender. Whoever was hiding in that shed had little chance at the autonomy and freedom that V had made for himself out of ashes, that he had given to Finch - those who had been the helpless in the old regime, clinging to what tiny protection they could muster, would be the helpless in this new world, too. In his utter destruction of the only authority that England knew, V had tried to bring about an end to all cages. He might yet succeed, but the only achievement that was certain was the abolition of what little protection those cages could give. Food, shelter, safety - Finch laughed to think he had been concerned with chocolate - it was wrong that people sold their souls for that, but it was not Finch's place to choose for them, to choose self-determination over fear. The Leader could not grind them into slavery, and V could not bludgeon them into freedom.

Finch drew his service revolver and marched down the hill, his hunger, his aching shoulder and his sore feet lost in the rush of energy, his weapon catching the slowly strengthening rays of the sun and gleaming like a steely lantern. He looked to his left and saw Dominic there, his weapon also ready, though Finch had never seen the young detective do so much as draw his gun.

"I always wanted to be a policeman," Dominic said, a rare smile suddenly shining out from his face. "Now I have the chance." Finch nodded to him, acknowledging his assistance, but kept his eyes focused on the trouble below.

"Police! Get away from that shed!" Finch bellowed, still standing a little way up the hill to give himself and Dominic the best chance should the mob of young men turn on them.

"Piss off!" The mob swirled uncertainly, but a few of them yelled right back, "Piss off, Fingerman!"

"It's just some scrag, she does everyone anyway," one of them called out, his tone strangely conciliatory. "She won't mind a freebie!"

"Get away from the shed!" Finch repeated, keeping his orders direct and simple, training his gun on the man who had spoken. "Get away from the shed. Go somewhere else."

The men milled about for a moment, a few bashing the shed once or twice more, and one made a little feint up the hill, only to retreat as the revolvers of the two policemen swung around to cover him. The mob's disorganisation and drunkenness that had brought about so much enthusiasm moment before ebbed away to nothing, and a few men started to stumble away past the smouldering ruins of the house, the chains of restored authority locking them back into their place. A few more followed, muttering and cursing, then the last of them suddenly realised they were alone and backed away fast, dispersing in all directions through the ravaged little village.

Finch proceeded down the hill warily and slowly, in case the mob surged back now that he had lost his high ground and Dominic had gone. Years of training in obedience and fear had done their job, though, and the mob was thoroughly defeated. Finch knocked on the shed door.

"Is anyone there? It's the police, you're safe now."

"Fingermen?" came a voice from inside, quickly hushed by someone else.

"No," Finch replied, keeping his voice level and calm. "The police. The young men are gone now. You're safe."

The door opened a crack, and a woman peered out, blinking in the daylight. She was in her thirties, a pretty woman but for the grazes down one side of her face and the missing chunks of hair on her head.

"You're...why are you here?" she asked, confused and afraid.

"I'm here to help you. To protect you because I couldn't protect others. Don't be afraid."

"I, I don't have money, but I can pay you." She seemed more confident, now, as she followed the steps of an old, familiar dance, coyly rearranging her long tresses to hide the raw patches of scalp where her hair had been pulled out.

Finch stepped back, his hands wide and unthreatening. "I don't need payment. God knows I sold my soul for years - I'm free now. No bartering, no begging, no bargains."

The woman looked at him like he was crazy, but he must have convinced her that he was harmless, if not that he was sane, because she moved out of the shed, away from the door, and another woman came out, then three children behind her, a girl in a flannel nightie, her skinny teenage legs covered in goosebumps, a curly-haired boy of about the same age, swallowing convulsively, and a little boy holding a wooden car, red bruises on his face.

The small boy's face was bright with relief, and Finch couldn't help but think of Paul, his dear little Paul whom he had shut out for so long, Paul with his thousand questions an hour, Paul who wanted to be a policeman like his dad, Paul who had been taken to his death with a smile because he was finally going get to ride in a real police van. Finch lowered his head, tears burning at the back of his throat, and let the memory inhabit him without flinching. One of the women touched his arm, her compassionate hand a reminder from which he would have shied, not long ago. Her family was safe, though, this little boy was alive because of him, and even after all the lies and horrors, Finch could no longer bring himself to be without hope.

**Author's Note:**

> "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing," attributed to Edmund Burke.
> 
> " I will not cease from mental fight /nor shall my sword sleep in my hand," William Blake, "And did those feet in ancient time".
> 
> "Could it think, the heart would stop beating." Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet.
> 
> "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world... /The best lack all conviction..." William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming".


End file.
